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Her Story:

No matter where you are in your internet marketing
endeavors you probably are in need of online mentoring.
Mentoring basically means giving assistance and guidance to
someone less experienced.

Think back on any job you have an. Did you receive some
training for that job? Did you have a supervisor or
manager? Even if you became the president of a company
there was probably somebody you could call upon at least
for feedback.

I know. Some of those managers were probably not very good
at training or mentoring. That’s definitely a problem with
many people placed in positions of leadership.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who are
ready and able to provide mentorship. Online coaching is no
different.

There are many membership programs vying for your business.
Some of them offer the moon and some can deliver. Many
can’t though because they’re no different than the lame
supervisors you’ve had.

Once you come aboard it’s up to you to sink or swim. It’s
amazing that that’s the attitude. They don’t realize that
you are essentially a customer and that you have a mouth.
And with that mouth you can either promote them negatively
or positively to others.

So what you’re looking for in online mentoring is a program
that has live experienced people pretty much at your
disposal. It makes no sense to have questions you need
answers to and then waiting several days. Find a program
with many qualified people to talk to.

If you don’t currently know much about internet marketing
you need to be able to get started in the right direction
without wasting a lot of time and money. Information
overload can be intimidating at times.

But experienced people can help you succeed in affiliate
marketing. More than likely they didn’t have qualified
online mentoring to help them through.

Some of the best programs will have Internet Marketing
Learning Centers that have training covering many different
“How To” subjects. Included may be things like article
marketing and pay per click advertising; search engine
optimization and Webmaster basics to name a few.

Through your online chats and suggestions they may add new
content and videos to their training materials. That’s the
beauty of finding a program that is truly there to aid you.

I’ve also seen programs give the members opportunities to
utilize articles, reports and niche ebooks. You may also
have the resell rights to some products increasing your
odds of making more sales.

Keep in mind that the mentoring will more than likely be
strictly online in the form of chat forums. This makes
sense because you’re in the online business.

About the Author:

Suzanne Morrison is a mentor with Affiliate Power Group
where they help people learn affiliate marketing. Check out
their internet marketing coaching if you need help making
money as an affiliate marketer.
http://www.affiliatepowergroup.com/public/10.cfm

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If you are a small business owner in the USA or Europe and you have not looked at marketing your products to Canadians you are missing a vast opportunity to grow your bottom line. According to Matt Hartley of the National Post, “Canada has one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world. More than half the adult population is on Facebook. Nearly 70% of Canadians watch videos online, while the average Internet user in Canada spends about 60 hours a month online.

In fact, English-speaking Canadians aged 18 to 34 spend more than a third of their time online, more than they spend listening to radio, watching television or reading newspapers, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB).

Across all age groups, Canadians are spending an increasing amount of time online. But the advertising dollars aren’t following them.”

In comparison, USA broadband penetration in 2008 was only 25% which is only the 15th highest in the world. The smart marketer would be targeting Canadians with their ads. Canadian businesses have not caught up to the consumers demand in offering a proportionate amount of internet marketing. What does this mean to businesses online? It means that if you are one of the few who are actively advertising to Canadians you are much more likely to succeed.

Canadians are also mobile savvy. They send over 45 million text messages every day – a stat that has cell phone companies “LOL-ing” all the way to the bank. Even when times are tight, Canadians still feel the need to be connected and just aren’t willing to do without their “Crackberries”. (CBC)

Canadians love the Internet. So why don’t advertisers get it? Many USA small businesses are timid when it comes to selling across the border. This could be the answer to your lower sales because of the economic downturn. Get over your fear and you will find a market of 33,212,696 Canadians searching for your products! Cross-border sales are so easy it is not much more work than selling to the next state. Try it, You’ll like it!

Twitter is growing in popularity because it is a way for small businesses to cut back on marketing costs, reach  national or international audiences and keep their existing customers up-to-date on what is happening within their business.

Twitter Small Business Case Study #1

In Albany, there is a Toyota car dealership where  this rather large, boisterous small business owner who is known for the tagline of ‘it’s huuuuuuuuge’ (as in the savings). He was smart enough to have his commercials direct people to the company Twitter account ( http://twitter.com/iamhuge). When you browse through his tweets you can’t help but chuckle. He is as cheesy on Twitter as he is in his commercials and that is the secret to his success online. He keeps it real and keeps it true to form. For him Twitter is a non-stop commercial and it works for him.

Twitter Small Business Case Study #2

Curtis Kimball owns a crème brûlée cart in San Francisco that moves from location to location on a daily basis. He was amazed one day to find out from a customer in line that they had read about his cart on Twitter. He immediately signed up for an account (http://twitter.com/cremebruleecart) and now has over 7,000 followers who wait everyday to hear where his cart will be located and what the flavors of the day will be. His business went from a part-time hobby business to a full-time business thanks to Twitter popularity.

In these economic times when advertizing budgets are tighter and sales may be declining, finding low cost sources for bringing in new customers is essential to staying afloat. These Twitter case studies demonstrate that the small business owner can compete if they are creative and learn to Twitter correctly.

Internet Marketing for Small Business | Niche Marketing Course | How to Find Profitable Niches

When the dotcom era arrived it was difficult to replicate that same customer satisfaction and referral process. You either had to satisfy the search engines for higher placement or you had to purchase expensive advertizing for your website. People stopped using the traditional ways of finding local products and services and turned to the internet as their source for shopping information.

There was no real way to let anyone who found you online  that you had a great product or the friendliest service in town. You could put testimonials on your website, but people soon became wise to the fact that 90% of those testimonials were fake. Then came sites like Twitter and FaceBook and MySpace.

These social sites are a gold mine for the creative small business owner. A creme brulee cart operator in San Fransisco grew by word-of-mouth via Twitter and within a few months the owner had to quit his day job to keep up with the growing demand of his little cart. (“Mom and Pop Operators Turn to Social Media”, Claire Cain Miller, NY Times, July 23,2009)

This goes to show you that the word-of-mouth era has returned but with a technological twist. It is now possible for your happy customers to bring you more business to your brick and mortar small business as well as your online business. A wise business owner will recognize this and grasp the golden ring. Encourage your customers to “Tweet you right”.

Be creative in asking your customers to give you that valuable referral. It may be something as simple as printing up a little sticker with “If you love me Tweet me” on it to put on your products or sales receipts in your store. Make sure if you are an online business you include your URL and a Tweet request on every product you ship out.

You will be surprised at how well this works. Most times your customers would not Tweet you because they never thought of it. Simply asking them to do it may be all you need to do. If you don’t ask you will not receive.

You could even turn it into an in-store contest. Offer a free product or service to a random customer you find Tweeting about you. There are many ways you can cultivate link love from your customers. Just be creative!

Be visible on Twitter yourself. This is a great platform for your small business to let your potential customers get to know you. Just be sure you know how to use social media effectively. Learn internet marketing for small business and you can reach a whole new level of success.

Internet Marketing for Small Business | Niche Marketing Course | How to Find Profitable Niches

Most of us already have the knowledge and information we need to succeed. What we lack is a clear course of actions needed to transform that information into dollars and the motivation to stick with it.  The best way to develop a plan of action is to sort through the information you have and set a daily routine that will map out the route you need to take to arrive at your goal.

For online marketing, there are 4 main goals.

1. Develop or find a product.
2. Generate traffic.
3. Gather leads.
4. Make sales.
5. Analyzing results.

Sounds simple right? It really is if you set your daily routines with these goals as the main focus. Lets break down each goal into a workable routine.

1. Developing or finding products. Whether you are selling information or tangible products, you need to spend a certain amount of time either creating them or sourcing them out. The easiest way is through affiliate programs where you sell someone else’s product for a commission. There are many different sources such as Clickbank, Commission Junction, Amazon and Paydotcom where you can find products that will pay you anywhere from 5%-75% of the sale price. Creating your own e-books and videos or membership sites is another way of generating a sellable product.

Whichever you choose, you should focus one day per week with this sole purpose in mind.

2. Generating traffic. There are a whole string of ways to do this. You can purchase traffic through advertising on other websites and pay per click ads. If you want to do it organically, you can spend time doing SEO on your website, posting in forums, answering questions in Yahoo Answers, writing articles to submit to article submission websites and commenting on blogs.

Social media and social bookmarking sites also is another way to generate traffic to your website. Posting your pages on Stumbleupon, Twitter, Facebook and other social sites is very effective. Doing up simple videos and posting them to video sharing sites like YouTube will also send lots of traffic to your site.

3. Gathering Leads. Building an email list is very important to your business. Making sure you have an opt-in box on your website and giving your visitors incentives to sign up can mean a huge difference in your bottom line at the end of each month.

If you are not skilled in this area you need to focus on learning more about it and sourcing out ways of growing your list.

4. Making sales. If you do everything else correctly the sales will automatically follow. Learning how to do effective sales copy writing and making a point of following up with your leads can add many dollars to your revenue every month. A weekly email to your list can bring you tons of sales that you would not have gotten without this little bit of effort on your part.

5. Analyzing results. You can’t get a sense of what is working and what is not unless you take the time to analyze the numbers. Tweaking is often needed to get the best results. When you take the time to go over your numbers, it will become very obvious to you where you need to focus more attention. Are you wasting your time in one area but getting great results in another? If you know this, you can focus the majority of your attention on what is working for you and therefore increase your sales and save yourself time.

You will notice that there are 5 goals and 5 work days in a week. The best way to tackle it is to devote one day per week on each specific goal and set all of the tasks that day accordingly.

If you can focus yourself in such a way you cannot help but reach your goals. Put it in writing and keep it visible at all times. This will help keep you on task.

Here is an example of the daily success routine.

Day 2- Traffic Generation

Today I will:

• Write and submit at least one article to an article submission site
• Answer 10 questions on Yahoo Answers
• Comment on 10 niche related blogs.
• Post a reply in 5 niche related forums.
• Submit my latest blog posts in all of the popular social bookmark sites.

If you break each of the goals down into doable actions it becomes easy to get into the success habit. It becomes routine for you and you will start to see the results. It is the results that will, in turn, keep you motivated to stick with it. The results will be dollars in the bank.

Why should your small business have a blog?

• The first reason is to build trust with your potential buyers. When they read your blog they can get a feel for your personality, ethics and workmanship. You become a real person to them and therefore more trustworthy.
• The second advantage is the ability to interact with your present or future customers. Ask for feedback or get their opinions. A blog invites people to leave comments. This is particularly useful if you are testing a new product or trying to improve the buyer experience on your website.
• The biggest advantage is the value it adds to your website. From a search engine’s perspective, their product is information. They want to deliver the most up-to-date information to their customers (ie: searchers). Each post you add to your blog counts as fresh content or another page added to your website. Google and other search engines thrive on fresh new content and will give your site more value than any site that is not blogging.
• Effective use of keywords and SEO for each blog post can skyrocket your website to the top of Google and other search engine rankings.

But how do you blog effectively? There are many free or paid internet marketing courses online that will show you the art of blogging for small businesses. There is a science to it but thankfully it is not rocket science. Anyone can do it once they know how. Find an internet marketer who has experience and is willing to teach and mentor you to the top. The best ones will teach the basics of internet marketing your small business for free so you will be making sales online before paying for more advanced lessons.

Internet Marketing for Small Business | Niche Marketing Course | Finding Profitable Niches | Social Media Marketing

The key is to understand that, as a business owner with a product or service to offer, you possess one of the most sought after items on the internet. That product is information. If you really think about what people use the internet for on a daily basis you will realize that the average person does not go shopping everyday online. Unless they have a very specific item they are looking to buy, most purchases result from stumbling across an item that they cannot do without but did not realize they needed.

The majority of searches done on a daily basis is the search for information on a wide variety of topics. They research problems they have. They look for information to comparison shop. They search for ways to improve the quality of their lives.

If you do not currently have a product that you can sell to the masses to grow your small business online, all you have to do is create a simple information product or report that you can sell online. The key is to know what product to create. You will find this out by researching your market and finding a profitable niche that is ready and waiting for the information you can supply.

In my niche marketing course I use the example of a small business that installs laminate flooring. This person is not likely to go outside their region to sell a job and laminate flooring is not a product that would lend itself well to shipping to customers outside their local area because of the cost of shipping.

So how could this small business owner grow his bottom line through niche marketing? We all know that home renovations and do it yourself projects have become a very hot market. This small business owner could get out his video camera and do a little do-it-yourself instructional video teaching people all of the tips and tricks of an experienced installer.

I know if I was a homeowner about to tackle installing a floor for the first time I would do my homework and find as much info as possible. I would not hesitate to pay a reasonable price for advice and instructions from an expert. And I am not alone. Many people would pay for that information.

The best part of this situation is that once your instructional video is created, there is no more work on your part to create any additional products. You have one product that you sell over and over again on autopilot to as many people as you can reach.

The next questions is how do you reach buyers? Again you do the market research and find targeted niche keywords that have low competition and you begin to build the foundation of your marketing campaign. It really is drop dead easy if you have the proper information.

I used the exact same niche marketing principles and took my small seasonal business and turned it into a 12 month per year money maker. It isn’t rocket science and it isn’t difficult. It just requires the right information to get you started. Once you understand how, you can continue to grow your bottom line anytime you want to add more revenue to your small business.

Internet Marketing for Small Business | Niche Marketing Course | Finding Profitable Niches | Social Media Marketing

What is a Twitter Hog?

A Twitter Hog is someone who tweets almost non-stop. They fill your pages all day long with their tweets. They are not effective marketers. They are not much better than spammers or at best Twitter junkies. Sure, they may not be posting about their business every time, but their ever-presence and page domination is just as in your face as a spammer. Their sole purpose is to take up your whole page as often as possible making it almost impossible to follow the tweets of anyone else. They think that is an effective way to market and brand themselves.

They are that one person at the party who has to be the center of attention at ALL times. They don’t realize that tweeting too often is the fastest way to getting ignored. A wise man knows that saying a little is more effective than saying too much.

Use your manners when tweeting. A little goes a long way and is far more effective when marketing your business. If you want your followers to keep following you then you must be kind to them. Don’t forget that your tweets go on their page and you are not the only one they are following.

So when it comes to business on Twitter, if you have something important to say, share it. If not, silence is often better than drivel. Don’t be a Twitter Hog.

Internet Marketing for Small Business | Niche Marketing Course | Finding Profitable Niches | Social Media Marketing

While learning as many ways possible to market your small business website or blog online it is important to remember that there are ways you can promote your small business website to your local customers that only involve a little tweaking of your existing business practices. This article outlines several very good ways to market your small business website offline.

How to Drive People to Your Website Without Using the Web
By Jason Nyback

While Internet marketing is essential to the success of any website, there are many ways to promote your website “offline.” If you own a brick and mortar business, you can direct people to your website without ever logging onto the Internet. Below you’ll find some great tips and tricks for promoting your website in the real world.

• List your website on your business cards. If your URL isn’t already displayed on your business cards, it should be.

• Put your website on your stationery, letterhead, and envelopes. Every printed piece of information you send out from your business should include your business URL.

• Put an e-mail signup sheet next to your cash register. When people check out at your store, encourage them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter to get information about upcoming sales, specials and events.

• Display your website name in any signage on your storefront. Incorporate your URL into as many of your store’s sign designs as possible.

• Have your website included with your contact information in your Yellow Page listings. Be sure to request the URL be added in the next edition of the phonebook.

• Provide your web address in your voicemail and answering machine messages. Spell out the URL if it is different from your company name.

• Incorporate your website URL into your advertising. Your web address should be included with your other contact information.

• Post flyers with your website information around town. Put tear-offs with your URL at the bottom of the flyer so people won’t forget the address.

• Tell customers about your website. Mention the website at checkout, on the phone, and in other interactions with clients.

I hope you have found these tips for marketing your small business website useful. There is one more point that Jason did not mention that I would also suggest.

• Ask your customers to “tweet” you on Twitter. This could be done by including a card with your small business website url on it with each purchase or placing a sticker on each product you sell asking for a Tweet.